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12/5/2018
Rail News: Railroading Supplier Spotlight
Rail supplier news from Alstom, dFuzion, MUL Railcars, CIT Group, AllTranstek and LTK (Dec. 5)
Alstom won a three-year contract from the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) to provide vendor managed inventory (VMI) services for the agency’s rail fleet. Worth more than $50 million, the contract includes two exercisable two-year options and follows an original contract signed in 2013. Alstom will continue to provide SFMTA parts, inventory planning and automated part replenishments, and management and oversight of the VMI program. The company also will provide as-needed technical and engineering services. Alstom will provide the VMI service to SFMTA from its Vallejo, California, facility.
Sound Transit has chosen dFuzion Inc.’s rMetrix® ride performance assessment system to help improve ride quality and comfort monitoring of rail lines and vehicles. The rMetrix system — which incorporates GPS and accelerometer sensors — changes the way ride quality data is collected, stored, analyzed and displayed, dFuzion officials said in a press release. The system is designed to monitor, collect and analyze geo-spatially correlated ride quality data, and make safety and maintenance recommendations in real time.
Mitsubishi UFJ Lease & Finance Co. Ltd. subsidiary MUL Railcars Inc. (MULR) reached a milestone Nov. 20 by leasing its 10,000th rail car. Over the past year, MULR has doubled the size of its fleet to more than 10,000 cars. The company plans to continue growing a diverse portfolio of cars through primary and secondary acquisition channels, MULR officials said in a press release. By 2020, MULR expects to expand its portfolio to 25,000 cars.
CIT Group Inc. has named Robert Rubino president of CIT Bank N.A., the firm’s banking subsidiary, effective Feb. 25. He will join the company’s executive management committee and report to Chairwoman and Chief Executive Officer Ellen Alemany. Rubino will be responsible for the oversight and growth of the commercial banking divisions, including commercial financing, real estate financing, equipment financing, commercial services and rail-car financing. He most recently was co-president of Santander Bank N.A. and head of commercial banking.
AllTranstek LLC has promoted James Dinell to vice president of technical services. He assumes responsibility for the day-to-day operations of the company’s four technical groups: nondestructive testing, welding and special processes; regulatory compliance; fleet engineering; and inspection services. Dinell joined AllTranstek in 1999 and was instrumental in the formation of the firm’s technical services group. AllTranstek provides fleet management services and tank-car technical expertise, and manages more than 275,000 rail cars in North America.
LTK Engineering Services has promoted Ernest Chance from vice president of the South Atlantic Region to VP of the Southeast Region; Winston Simmonds from senior systems consultant to VP of the DC Metropolitan Region; David Diaz from VP of special projects to VP of the Middle Atlantic Region; and Raymond Carini from VP of the Middle Atlantic Region to senior VP. Chance has more than four decades of experience in the transit/railroad industry and will continue to manage the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority’s (WMATA) 8000-series vehicle procurement program. Simmonds has more than 28 years of project, engineering and construction management experience in the transportation/public transit industry, and will continue managing WMATA’s 7000-series vehicle procurement program. Diaz has more than 30 years of experience as an engineering project leader with expertise in all segments of railroad and transit disciplines. A 38-year LTK veteran, Carini has extensive experience with large-scale projects involving design, implementation, rail-car procurement and planning.
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